Awiyao reached for the upper horizontal log which served as
the edge of the headhigh threshold. Clinging to the log, he lifted himself with one
bound that carried him across to the narrow door. He slid back the cover, stepped inside,
then pushed the cover back in place. After some moments during which he seemed to wait, he
talked to the listening darkness.

"I'm sorry this had to be done. I am really sorry. But neither of us can help
it."

The sound of the gangsas beat through the walls of the dark house like muffled roars of
falling waters. The woman who had moved with a start when the sliding door opened had been
hearing the gangsas for she did not know how long. There was a sudden rush of fire in her.
She gave no sign that she heard Awiyao, but continued to sit unmoving in the darkness.

But Awiyao knew that she heard him and his heart pitied her. He crawled on all fours to
the middle of the room; he knew exactly where the stove was. With bare fingers he stirred
the covered smoldering embers, and blew into the stove. When the coals began to glow,
Awiyao put pieces of pine on them, then full round logs as his arms. The room brightened.

"Why don't you go out," he said, "and join the dancing women?" He felt
a pang inside him, because what he said was really not the right thing to say and because
the woman did not stir. "You should join the dancers," he said, "as if--as
if nothing had happened." He looked at the woman huddled in a corner of the room,
leaning against the wall. The stove fire played with strange moving shadows and lights
upon her face. She was partly sullen, but her sullenness was not because of anger or hate.

"Go out--go out and dance. If you really don't hate me for this separation, go out
and dance. One of the men will see you dance well; he will like your dancing, he will
marry you. Who knows but that, with him, you will be luckier than you were with me."

"I don't want any man," she said sharply. "I don't want any other
man."

He felt relieved that at least she talked: "You know very well that I won't want any
other woman either. You know that, don't you? Lumnay, you know it, don't you?"

She did not answer him.

"You know it Lumnay, don't you?" he repeated.

"Yes, I know," she said weakly.

"It is not my fault," he said, feeling relieved. "You cannot blame me; I
have been a good husband to you."

"Neither can you blame me," she said. She seemed about to cry.

"No, you have been very good to me. You have been a good wife. I have nothing to say
against you." He set some of the burning wood in place. "It's only that a man
must have a child. Seven harvests is just too long to wait. Yes, we have waited too long.
We should have another chance before it is too late for both of us."

This time the woman stirred, stretched her right leg out and bent her left leg in. She
wound the blanket more snugly around herself.

"You know that I have done my best," she said. "I have prayed to Kabunyan
much. I have sacrificed many chickens in my prayers."

"Yes, I know."

"You remember how angry you were once when you came home from your work in the
terrace because I butchered one of our pigs without your permission? I did it to appease
Kabunyan, because, like you, I wanted to have a child. But what could I do?"

"Kabunyan does not see fit for us to have a child," he said. He stirred the
fire. The spark rose through the crackles of the flames. The smoke and soot went up the
ceiling.

Lumnay looked down and unconsciously started to pull at the rattan that kept the split
bamboo flooring in place. She tugged at the rattan flooring. Each time she did this the
split bamboo went up and came down with a slight rattle. The gong of the dancers
clamorously called in her care through the walls.

Awiyao went to the corner where Lumnay sat, paused before her, looked at her bronzed and
sturdy face, then turned to where the jars of water stood piled one over the other. Awiyao
took a coconut cup and dipped it in the top jar and drank. Lumnay had filled the jars from
the mountain creek early that evening.

"I came home," he said. "Because I did not find you among the dancers. Of
course, I am not forcing you to come, if you don't want to join my wedding ceremony. I
came to tell you that Madulimay, although I am marrying her, can never become as good as
you are. She is not as strong in planting beans, not as fast in cleaning water jars, not
as good keeping a house clean. You are one of the best wives in the
whole village."

"That has not done me any good, has it?" She said. She looked at him lovingly.
She almost seemed to smile.

He put the coconut cup aside on the floor and came closer to her. He held her face between
his hands and looked longingly at her beauty. But her eyes looked away. Never again would
he hold her face. The next day she would not be his any more. She would go back to
her parents. He let go of her face, and she bent to the floor again and looked at her
fingers as they tugged softly at the split bamboo floor.

"This house is yours," he said. "I built it for you. Make it your own, live
in it as long as you wish. I will build another house for Madulimay."

"I have no need for a house," she said slowly. "I'll go to my own house. My
parents are old. They will need help in the planting of the beans, in the pounding of the
rice."

"I will give you the field that I dug out of the mountains during the first year of
our marriage," he said. "You know I did it for you. You helped me to make it for
the two of us."

"I have no use for any field," she said.

He looked at her, then turned away, and became silent. They were silent for a time.

"Go back to the dance," she said finally. "It is not right for you to be
here. They will wonder where you are, and Madulimay will not feel good. Go back to the
dance."

"I would feel better if you could come, and dance---for the last time. The gangsas
are playing."

"You know that I cannot."

"Lumnay," he said tenderly. "Lumnay, if I did this it is because of my need
for a child. You know that life is not worth living without a child. The man have mocked
me behind my back. You know that."

"I know it," he said. "I will pray that Kabunyan will bless you and
Madulimay."

She bit her lips now, then shook her head wildly, and sobbed.

She thought of the seven harvests that had passed, the high hopes they had in the
beginning of their new life, the day he took her away from her parents across the roaring
river, on the other side of the mountain, the trip up the trail which they had to climb,
the steep canyon which they had to cross. The waters boiled in her mind in forms of white
and jade and roaring silver; the waters tolled and growled,
resounded in thunderous echoes through the walls of the stiff cliffs; they were far away
now from somewhere on the tops of the other ranges, and they had looked carefully at the
buttresses of rocks they had to step on---a slip would have meant death.

They both drank of the water then rested on the other bank before they made the final
climb to the other side of the mountain.

She looked at his face with the fire playing upon his features---hard and strong, and
kind. He had a sense of lightness in his way of saying things which often made her and the
village people laugh. How proud she had been of his humor. The muscles where taut and
firm, bronze and compact in their hold upon his skull---how frank his bright eyes were.
She looked at his body the carved out of the mountains
five fields for her; his wide and supple torso heaved as if a slab of shining lumber were
heaving; his arms and legs flowed down in fluent muscles--he was strong and for that she
had lost him.

She flung herself upon his knees and clung to them. "Awiyao, Awiyao, my
husband," she cried. "I did everything to have a child," she said
passionately in a hoarse whisper. "Look at me," she cried. "Look at my
body. Then it was full of promise. It could dance; it could work fast in the fields; it
could climb the mountains fast. Even now it is firm, full. But, Awiyao, I am useless. I
must die."

"It will not be right to die," he said, gathering her in his arms. Her whole
warm naked naked breast quivered against his own; she clung now to his neck, and her hand
lay upon his right shoulder; her hair flowed down in cascades of gleaming darkness.

"I don't care about the fields," she said. "I don't care about the house. I
don't care for anything but you. I'll have no other man."

"Then you'll always be fruitless."

"I'll go back to my father, I'll die."

"Then you hate me," he said. "If you die it means you hate me. You do not
want me to have a child. You do not want my name to live on in our tribe."

She was silent.

"If I do not try a second time," he explained, "it means I'll die. Nobody
will get the fields I have carved out of the mountains; nobody will come after me."

"If you fail--if you fail this second time--" she said thoughtfully. The voice
was a shudder. "No--no, I don't want you to fail."

"If I fail," he said, "I'll come back to you. Then both of us will die
together. Both of us will vanish from the life of our tribe."

The gongs thundered through the walls of their house, sonorous and faraway.

"You will keep the beads. They come from far-off times. My grandmother said they come
from up North, from the slant-eyed people across the sea. You keep them, Lumnay. They are
worth twenty fields."

"I'll keep them because they stand for the love you have for me," she said.
"I love you. I love you and have nothing to give."

She took herself away from him, for a voice was calling out to him from outside.
"Awiyao! Awiyao! O Awiyao! They are looking for you at the dance!"

"I am not in hurry."

"The elders will scold you. You had better go."

"Not until you tell me that it is all right with you."

"It is all right with me."

He clasped her hands. "I do this for the sake of the tribe," he said.

"I know," she said.

He went to the door.

"Awiyao!"

He stopped as if suddenly hit by a spear. In pain he turned to her. Her face was in agony.
It pained him to leave. She had been wonderful to him. What was it that made a man wish
for a child? What was it in life, in the work in the field, in the planting and harvest,
in the silence of the night, in the communing with husband and wife, in the whole life of
the tribe itself that made man wish for the laughter and speech of a child? Suppose he
changed his mind? Why did the unwritten law demand, anyway, that a man, to be a man, must
have a child to come after him? And if he was fruitless--but he loved Lumnay. It was like
taking away of his life to leave her like this.

"Awiyao," she said, and her eyes seemed to smile in the light. "The
beads!" He turned back and walked to the farthest corner of their room, to the trunk
where they kept their worldly possession---his battle-ax and his spear points, her betel
nut box and her beads. He dug out from the darkness the beads which had been given to him
by his grandmother to give to Lumnay on the beads on, and tied them in place. The white
and jade and deep orange obsidians shone in the firelight. She suddenly clung to him,
clung to his neck as if she would never let him go.

"Awiyao! Awiyao, it is hard!" She gasped, and she closed her eyes and huried her
face in his neck.

The call for him from the outside repeated; her grip loosened, and he buried out into the
night.

Lumnay sat for some time in the darkness. Then she went to the door and opened it. The
moonlight struck her face; the moonlight spilled itself on the whole village.

She could hear the throbbing of the gangsas coming to her through the caverns of the other
houses. She knew that all the houses were empty that the whole tribe was at the dance.
Only she was absent. And yet was she not the best dancer of the village? Did she not have
the most lightness and grace? Could she not, alone among all women, dance like a bird
tripping for grains on the ground, beautifully
timed to the beat of the gangsas? Did not the men praise her supple body, and the women
envy the way she stretched her hands like the wings of the mountain eagle now and then as
she danced? How long ago did she dance at her own wedding? Tonight, all the women who
counted, who once danced in her honor, were dancing now in honor of another whose only
claim was that perhaps she could give her
husband a child.

"It is not right. It is not right!" she cried. "How does she know? How can
anybody know? It is not right," she said.

Suddenly she found courage. She would go to the dance. She would go to the chief of the
village, to the elders, to tell them it was not right. Awiyao was hers; nobody could take
him away from her. Let her be the first woman to complain, to denounce the unwritten rule
that a man may take another woman. She would tell Awiyao to come back to her. He surely
would relent. Was not their love as strong as the
river?

She made for the other side of the village where the dancing was. There was a flaming glow
over the whole place; a great bonfire was burning. The gangsas clamored more loudly now,
and it seemed they were calling to her. She was near at last. She could see the dancers
clearly now. The man leaped lightly with their gangsas as they circled the dancing women
decked in feast garments and beads, tripping on the ground like graceful birds, following
their men. Her heart warmed to the flaming call of the dance; strange heat in her blood
welled up, and she started to run. But the gleaming brightness of the bonfire commanded
her to stop. Did anybody see her approach?
She stopped. What if somebody had seen her coming? The flames of the bonfire leaped in
countless sparks which spread and rose like yellow points and died out in the night. The
blaze reached out to her like a spreading radiance. She did not have the courage to break
into the wedding feast.

Lumnay walked away from the dancing ground, away from the village. She thought of the new
clearing of beans which Awiyao and she had started to make only four moons before. She
followed the trail above the village.

When she came to the mountain stream she crossed it carefully. Nobody held her hand, and
the stream water was very cold. The trail went up again, and she was in the moonlight
shadows among the trees and shrubs. Slowly she climbed the mountain.

When Lumnay reached the clearing, she cold see from where she stood the blazing bonfire at
the edge of the village, where the wedding was. She could hear the far-off clamor of the
gongs, still rich in their sonorousness, echoing from mountain to mountain. The sound did
not mock her; they seemed to call far to her, to speak to her in the language of
unspeaking love. She felt the pull of their gratitude for her
sacrifice. Her heartbeat began to sound to her like many gangsas.

Lumnay though of Awiyao as the Awiyao she had known long ago-- a strong, muscular boy
carrying his heavy loads of fuel logs down the mountains to his home. She had met him one
day as she was on her way to fill her clay jars with water. He had stopped at the spring
to drink and rest; and she had made him drink the cool mountain water from her coconut
shell. After that it did not take him long to decide to throw his spear on the stairs of
her father's house in token on his desire to marry her.

The mountain clearing was cold in the freezing moonlight. The wind began to stir the
leaves of the bean plants. Lumnay looked for a big rock on which to sit down. The bean
plants now surrounded her, and she was lost among them.

A few more weeks, a few more months, a few more harvests---what did it matter? She would
be holding the bean flowers, soft in the texture, silken almost, but moist where the dew
got into them, silver to look at, silver on the light blue, blooming whiteness, when the
morning comes. The stretching of the bean pods full length from the hearts of the wilting
petals would go on.